Loved this book - very informative as well as entertaining. Barbara writes well and keeps the reader's interest. Set in the second half of the nineteenth century, it is about the struggles women faced if they wanted to enter the medical profession. Although a work of fiction, it is based on real women doctors who lived at the time.

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Book description

Beautiful and courageous, Samantha Hargrave dares to dream that she will become one of the first female doctors—and surgeons—in America. Born in the slums of London and possessing a special gift for healing, Samantha struggles to enter the all-male medical profession. When her ambition meets with hostile rejection in England, she sails to America, where she meets an eccentric doctor who takes her on as an apprentice. But at the high-profile Astor Ball in New York, Samantha is introduced to the second of the three men who will change her life forever—and love just might interfere with her ambition.

Growing up in the squalor of Victorian London, Samantha dreams of becoming a doctor. From the crowded wards of charity hospitals to the grandeur of society receptions and the calm of medical schools, she uses all her strength and will to fight the prejudice which has banished women from medicine.